New Communities of Interpretation
Networking Europe and New Communities of Interpretation (1400–1600)
Long-distance ties connecting Europeans from all geographical corners of the continent during the fifteenth and sixteenth century facilitated the sharing of religious texts books iconography ideas and practices. The contributions to this book aim to reconstruct these European networks of knowledge exchange by exploring how religious ideas and strategies of transformation ‘travelled’ and were shared in European and transatlantic cultural spaces. In order to come to a better understanding of Europe-wide processes of religious culture and religious change the chapters focus on the agency of the laity in ‘new communities of interpretation’ instead of intellectual elites the aristocracy and religious institutions. These new communities of interpretation were often formed by an urban laity active in politics finance and commerce. The agency of religious literatures in the European vernaculars in processes of religious purification reform and innovation during the long fifteenth century is still largely underestimated. ‘Networking Europe’ aims to step away from studying ‘national’ textual production and consumption by approaching these topics instead from a European and interconnected perspective. The contributions to this book explore late medieval and early modern networks connecting people and transporting texts following three main axes of investigation: ‘European Connections’ ‘Exiles Diasporas and Migrants’ and ‘Mobility and Dissemination’.
Religious Transformations in New Communities of Interpretation in Europe (1350–1570)
Bridging the Historiographical Divides
This volume brings together medievalist and early modernist specialists whose research fields are traditionally divided by the jubilee year of 1500 in order to concentrate on the role of the laity (and those in holy orders) in the religious transformations characterizing the ‘long fifteenth century’ from the flourishing of the Devotio Moderna to the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.
Recent historiography has described the Christian church of the fifteenth century as a world of ‘multiple options’ in which the laity was engaged with the clergy in a process of communication and negotiation leading to the emergence of hybrid forms of religious life. The religious manifestations of such ‘new communities of interpretation’ appear in an array of biblical and religious texts which widely circulated in manuscript before benefiting from the new print media.
This collection casts a spectrum of new yet profoundly historical light on themes of seminal relevance to present-day European society by analysing patterns of inclusion and exclusion and examining shifts in hierarchic and non-hierarchic relations articulated through religious practices texts and other phenomena featuring in the lives of groups and individuals. The academic team assembled for this collection is internationally European as well as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in its methodology.
Religious Practices and Everyday Life in the Long Fifteenth Century (1350–1570)
Interpreting Changes and Changes of Interpretation
The essays in this book bring to light and analyse the continuities and shifts in daily religious practices across Europe - from Portugal to Hungary and from Italy to the British Isles - in the transition from the Middle Ages to the early modern period. While some of these changes such as the increasing use of rosaries and the resort to Ars Moriendi were the consequence of the rise of a more personal and interiorized faith other changes had different causes. These included the spreading of the Reformation over Europe the expulsion or compulsory conversion of the Jews in the Iberian Peninsula and the conquest of large portions of eastern Christianity by the Turks - all of which forced people who suddenly found that they had become religious minorities to adopt new ways of living and new strategies for expressing their religiosity.
By recovering and analysing the cultural dynamics and connections between religious power knowledge culture and practices this collection reconsiders and enriches our understanding of one of the most critical phases of Europe’s cultural history. At the same time it challenges existing narratives of the development of (early) modern identities that still all too often dominate the self-understanding of contemporary European society.
Religious Connectivity in Urban Communities (1400–1550)
Reading, Worshipping, and Connecting through the Continuum of Sacred and Secular
The boundaries between sacred and secular in the late Middle Ages traditionally perceived as separate domains are nowadays perceived as porous or non-existent. This collection on religious connectivity explores a new approach to religious culture in the late Middle Ages. In assessing the porosity of the domains of sacred and secular and of religious and lay the contributors to this collection investigate processes of transfer of religious knowledge literature and artefacts and the people involved.
Religious connectivity describes people in networks. This concept emphasises dynamics and processes rather than stability and focuses on all persons involved in transfer and appropriation not just the producers. It is therefore a fruitful concept by which to explore medieval society and the continuum of sacred and secular. By using the lens of religious connectivity the authors of this collection shed new light on religious activities and religious culture in late medieval urban communities.